Gustavo Arellano: In Trump's regime, Catholics are among the most powerful -- and deported

Her brown face, green mantle and forgiving gaze is a mainstay of Southern California: In front yards. As murals. On decals flashing from car windows and bumpers. Sold at swap meets in the form of T-shirts, ponchos, statues, bags and so much more.

Tomorrow, it will be the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and She couldn't come soon enough. 2025 will go down as one of the best and worst years ever to be a Catholic in the United States.

Members of my faith are in positions of power in this country like never before. Vice President JD Vance is a convert. A majority of the Supreme Court are practicing Catholics. Names of past Catholic diasporas like Kennedy, Bondi, Loeffler and Rubio dot Trump's Cabinet. This week, he became the first president to formally recognize the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Catholic holy day celebrating Mary, the mother of Jesus.

"For nearly 250 years, Mary has played a distinct role in our great American story," Trump declared, offering a brief Catholic history of the United States that would've made this country's Puritan forefathers retch. He even shouted out Our Lady of Guadalupe's feast day, commending the "steadfast devotion to Mary that originated in the heart of Mexico."

It's the second year in a row where Trump has wrapped himself in the Empress of the Americas. Last year, he shared Her famous image on social media on Sept. 8, when Catholics celebrate the birth of the Virgin Mary, with the caption "Happy birthday, Mary!"

I wish I could say Guadalupe is changing Trump's shriveled excuse of a heart. But it's impossible to reach that conclusion when so many Catholics in the U.S. face unholy persecution because of his deportation deluge.

A study released earlier this year by a coalition of evangelical and Catholic groups found that 61% of immigrants at risk of deportation in this country identify as Catholic, while nearly one-fifth of U.S. Catholics "would be impacted" by someone being deported. The latter figure is nearly three times the rate that evangelicals face and four times the rate of other Christian denominations.

Guadalupanos — people with a special devotion to Guadalupe, the overwhelming majority of whom are Latino — can't even venerate Her in peace this year because of Trump.

The neighborhood house that I visit every year to pray the novena in honor of Guadalupe with others has seen way fewer people than last year. In Chicago, where immigration agents terrorized residents all fall, officials at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in suburban Des Plaines are seeing the same even as they adopt security measures to reassure attendees. Out in the Coachella Valley, a beloved pilgrimage in honor of la guadalupana held for more than 20 years was canceled, with organizers announcing on Facebook in Spanish that the faithful should instead do a "spiritual interior pilgrimage where our mother invites us to keep us united in a secure environment."

Since July, San Bernardino diocese bishop Alberto Rojas has allowed Catholics to skip Mass because of all the raids in the Inland Empire. He was joined this week by Diocese of Baton Rouge Bishop Michael Duca as la migra now roams Louisiana. "We should be anticipating the joy of Christmas, surrounded by our family in celebration," Duca wrote, "instead of the experience of anxiety and fear."

That's the sad irony of seeing Catholicism have such a prominent role in Trump's second term. The main defamers of Catholics in the United States have been Protestants since the days of the founding fathers. They cast successive waves of immigrants — Irish, Italians, Poles, Mexicans, Vietnamese — as evil, stupid immigrants beholden to Rome. They wrongly predicted each group would ruin the American way of life.

Now that Catholics are at the top, they're the ones pushing policies that persecute the new generation of immigrants, Catholic and not. They mock the exhortations of church leaders to follow the Bible's many commands to protect the stranger, the meek, the least and the poor by arguing that deporting the undocumented is somehow righteous.

That's why, as we end a terrible year and Trump vows to escalate his cruel anti-immigrant campaign in the next one, Catholics and non-Catholics alike need to remember who Our Lady of Guadalupe is like never before. She's more than just an iconic image; this dark-skinned María stands against everything Trump and his brand of Catholicism preaches.

The faithful believe that Guadalupe appeared in 1531 near modern day Mexico City — not before the conquering Spanish priests who were destroying the old ways of the Aztecs and other Indigenous groups, but to the conquered who looked like her. The manuscript that shared her story with the world quoted her as promising to "hear all their cries ... and remedy all their miseries, sorrows, and pains."

Siding with the underdogs against the elites is why Mexicans carried Guadalupe's banner in the War of Independence and during the Mexican Revolution. Why Cesar Chavez carried her during United Farm Workers marches and why generations of Chicano artists have reimagined la virgencita as everything from a bikini-clad model to a jogger — the more quotidian, the better.

It's why there are 19 parishes, sanctuaries and missions named after her in the dioceses of Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino — by far the most of any saint, sacrament or Marian apparition in the Southland. It's why the late Pope Francis regularly celebrated mass in honor of Guadalupe's feast day at the Vatican and admonished those who wished to "gain ideological advantage over the mystery of Guadalupe" last year during a homily at St. Peter's Basilica. Presiding over the service was Cardinal Robert Prevost, who is now Pope Leo XIV and whose devotion to Guadalupe is such that he was consecrated as a bishop 11 years ago this Dec. 12.

It's why Guadalupe has emerged as a symbol against Trump's deportation Leviathan.

Her message of hope for the poor over the privileged stands in contrast to the limousine Catholics who dominate Trumpland. They're the ones that have successfully spent millions of dollars to move the church in the United States to the right (55% of Catholics chose Trump last year), repeatedly tried to torpedo the reforms of Pope Francis and are already souring on Pope Leo for describing Trump's raids as "extremely disrespectful" to the dignity of migrants. They're the ones who have expressed more outrage over the assassination of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk this fall than the suffering that millions of their fellow Catholics have endured all year under Trump.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, grant us the strength to fight back against the Herod of our time.

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